We Need Different Nametags Now
by MotorcycleChickenSmile
Summary: Oneshot. Missing moment from the "His Name Was Robert Paulson" scene. Rated for language and mild gore. Not slash. Reviews make me smile.


_A/N; My second fic! I just saw this movie for the first time like a week ago and now I'm obsessed. Reviews make me smile!_

_Disclaimer: I do not own Fight Club or any of its characters or concepts. I am not getting paid for this._

_We Need Different Nametags Now_

I watch Marla turn around and walk away from me, her high heels making a fast, frightened clicking noise like the trigger of a gun cocking repeatedly. I stop to wonder momentarily what it meant that that's the first sound analogy my mind goes to, but I don't really care either way. For a second I think Marla's hair is getting frizzier and wilder the further away she moves from me, but then I realize it's just my corneas fazing in and out of coherence. I'm a frustrating combination of physically piss-drunk and mentally piss-sober, and my bare knees are getting cold out here in the back garden. There's something whimsically depressing about a man walking around in a bathrobe, shoes with socks, and no pants. It's almost got a Rockefeller kind of nostalgia to it these days. I take another swig of the cheap plastic vodka and immediately feel like spewing it in the face of the shaved space monkey raking the yard next to me. Instead I swallow it and chuck the jug, not even hard enough to be able to make it break on the ground. I am Jack's pathetic impotent misery.

A part of me wants to run after Marla. Maybe slap her a few times or force her to kiss me or something, force her to be with someone who wasn't Tyler just to see how she'd react. But another part of me doesn't care if she walks into the street and gets hit by a bus. Before I can decide which part carries more clout, I notice all the members of Project Mayhem dropping their hoes and shovels and running into the back door of the huge dilapidated old house. Something is up at the Paper Street Soap Company. Narrowing my blurry eyes, I jog in after them. I guess even heartbreaking, gut-wrenching loneliness and rejection isn't enough to completely purge me of my curiosity. Curiosity. That's another advantage Tyler has over me. Even after he's abandoned me I'm still hopelessly curious about every last little piece of shit he's left behind, and that includes Project Mayhem.

The second I'm in the kitchen I know something is wrong. It takes a lot of shoving to force my way through the densely packed space monkeys, most of them sweating through their black clothes in spite of the bitter chill wafting in the open back door, but eventually I wrestle my way up to the table. Everyone is talking at once. Their voices pile up and clutter like trash inside my ears until one person finally cuts through the others with sheer volume and pitch.

"Make some fucking room!"

They're carrying something. It takes four guys to move it. I watch them bring the giant limp shape into the room and lay it on the table. Piles of soap and papers and all the space monkey's other fun little arts and crafts projects are shoved onto the floor to make room for it. They lay the big fat thing down and it's a body. My heart turns into lead, then drops into my gut and splashes acid all the way to the back of my eyes. I hear the furious banter going back and forth between the space monkeys but it all goes straight through me. I think in some lost, subconscious way, I know what's happened already. How could I have missed it, with those big tits staring me in the face right there on the table? But I open my mouth and croak out the question anyway.

"What happened?? What happened??" I cry.

The thick-necked space monkey who I think used to be a mechanic is getting his leg taped up as he turns to look at me. He runs off some little explanatory lines about something something Latte Thunder something something.

"It went smooth until…"

I can't look at the body on the table. I stare across it. My eyes are burning and my mouth is dry.

"What?" I say quietly.

"They shot Bob," Thick-Neck mutters, his voice failing. "They shot him in the head."

"Those fucking pigs!" the kid taping up Thick-Neck's leg spits furiously.

I guess I knew it already, but somehow it all clicks together at that moment and it's like I'm finding out afresh. I turn and pull the bag off Bob's head without even thinking, and it's like pulling the stopper out of a blended pumpkin. Wet brains slosh out and splatter on the floor, and all the space monkeys groan and cry out and one of them probably pukes somewhere. You can never tell when they're all together in a room like that.

I stare at Bob's face. It's not reaching me somehow. It's like a delayed reaction. The big guy is white and his eyes are open, staring straight up at the ceiling. His mouth is open too. I just stand there and stare at him like I can't move. That's the thing about delayed reactions. We focus on the delay and tend to forget about the reaction, but it always comes. And it's usually horrible. In a few seconds the delay is over and the reaction hits me like a hydrogen bomb in the groin. I gasp and stare at him, my eyes already clouding up.

"Those mother fuckers!" the leg-taper screams.

A voice, miserable and furious at once, starts talking, and then I figured out it's me.

"You morons," I say quietly, and my hands are on Bob suddenly, resting on his arm or his huge stomach. "You're running around in ski masks, trying to blow things up, what did you think was gonna happen?!"

I am Jack's screaming rage. I am Jack's guilty bleeding terror. I am Jack's horrific realization of the truth.

I look back down at Bob. The reaction is still exploding all around me. I am half-blind with tears but they wouldn't fall. I cover my mouth with my hand and bend further over him, unable to look away from those big blank eyes and that big open mouth. Denial. This can't be happening. I think I'm going to be sick.

It is happening. He's dead. Bob is dead. Project Mayhem has completely ceased to be a game, a fun little circus cooked up by Tyler Durden to see how many different ways he could stick it to the corporate world. It's become something else entirely, a huge ugly monster that all of a sudden lashed out and destroyed a human life. Someone is dead. It's not a fucking game anymore. Bob Paulson is dead. I am Jack's horrific realization of the truth.

A voice cuts through my reeling, grieving brain.

"Ok, quick," Thick-Neck says. He sounds terrified. "We gotta get rid of the evidence. We gotta get rid of this body!"

"Bury him."

I look up. "What?"

"Take him to the garden and bury him." It's Angel-Face. I stare at him. He doesn't even have enough of a soul left to look scared. Everyone mimics me and stares at him. The room is hot and silent.

"Come on, people, LET'S GO!" he erupts.

Immediately the space monkeys swarm in from all sides. When they have something to do, a direct order, they're as efficient as the atomic clock. Hands reach in to lift Bob off the table.

"Hey, hey! NO!" I scream, frantically slapping and swatting them away. I crouch over Bob, my arms covering him, like a dog trying to protect a ham. "Get your fucking hands off…get away from him! What are you talking about? This isn't a fucking piece of evidence, this is a person. He's a friend of mine, and you're not gonna bury him in the fucking garden!"

"He was killed serving Project Mayhem, sir!"

Fucking Angel-face. What does he even think he's doing with that "sir" crap? Who do they think they're kidding, pretending they still respect me when Tyler's not around?

But even as I think those words the anger is draining from me like fat through a strainer. I am Jack's crumbling constitution.

"This is Bob," I cry weakly. It's all I can think of to say, because right now it's the only thing that I know is true.

"Sir…"

That word again.

"Sir…" it's one of the younger space monkeys, one of the kids right out of college. "In…in Project Mayhem we have no names."

"You listen to me," I look up, grief and anger and disbelief combating together in my voice. Fighting to maintain composure. "This is a man, and he has a name. It's Robert Paulson, ok?"

"Robert Paulson," Thick-Neck echoes.

"Robert Paulson," College-boy echoes.

"This is a man, and he's DEAD NOW, because of us, alright, do you understand that?"

A few seconds of silence. God. All I can look at is Bob's face. I feel bile threatening to shoot up my esophagus any minute. Then--

"I understand."

It's Thick-Neck. I don't look at him.

He's got some kind of solemn man-at-a-graveside tone to his voice. "In death, a member of Project Mayhem has a name. His name is Robert Paulson."

I look up. Something about that strikes terror into me. I don't know why.

College-boy says it next. "His name is Robert Paulson."

Shit.

Then Thick-Neck again. "His name is Robert Paulson."

Shit. Shit shit shit. Now they're all saying it. They're chanting it. It's a mantra.

"Come on guys, please…stop it," I try pathetically.

They chant louder, all of them together. They took Bob's name. They took it and made it another tool of Project Mayhem, just another way to suck each other down deeper into this hole. What have I done…

"SHUT UP!" I try to yell over the din and chanting voices. "This is all over with!"

Yeah. Like I could end it now. Like it's up to me.

"His name is Robert Paulson! His name is Robert Paulson! His name is Robert Paulson!"

His name is Robert Paulson. Bob. His name was Bob. My name was Cornelius. He was the one who came over to me. I didn't go over to him. He was the one who grabbed me and started slobbering all over me. It's the big fat moose's own damn fault he's dead. He should never have come over to me. Why couldn't he have picked someone else to grab and squeeze and hug into his huge tits? Why'd he have to pick Cornelius? It's his own fucking fault. He came over to me.

I am Jack's denial.

"His name is Robert Paulson! His name is Robert Paulson! HIS NAME IS ROBERT PAULSON!"

More than 40 people were killed in incidents of workplace rage between 1986 and 1997. The term "Going Postal" was first applied in 1993 in the _St. Petersburg Times. _It's fascinating the kind of things a person will look up on Wikipedia when they're sitting alone in their office cubicle contemplating the idea of putting staples into their own eyeballs so they won't have to sit through another board meeting. But anyway.

I am Jack. Going postal.

"SHUT THE FUCK UP!" I scream so loudly that the mantra stops. The space monkeys, all of them, even Angel-Face, stop chanting and look at me. I'm not looking at them, so I don't know what kind of expressions they're wearing.

"Get out," I say quietly. I lean over. I put my hands on the table next to Bob's body and hang my head down so far it descends far beneath my shoulder line. I can't look at anything. No one in the kitchen moves.

"GET OUT! GET THE FUCK OUT! EVERY LAST FUCKING ONE OF YOU!"

That does it. I don't know what it is. Maybe they're willing to listen to me because of my second-in-command relationship with Tyler. Maybe I've even moved up to a sort of honory-first-in-command since Tyler split. Or maybe, by some impossible chance, the space monkeys listen to me because they still have the faint human ability to pick up on grief and suffering. I don't know. Whatever the reason, my screaming does the trick. The space monkeys all file out of the kitchen in grave silence. I'm alone with the body lying on the table.

I don't know how long it is before I look up, but when I do, I can't see anything because my eyes are so full of tears. It's been months since I stopped going to support group meetings, months since I met Tyler Durden and abandoned every vestige of my old life. Months since I'd used crying as a therapeutic method of ripping myself up into little pieces so I could be put back together again as a person who wasn't suffering from insomnia.

I've forgotten what it feels like.

But these tears aren't healing me. They aren't a shortcut or a quick-fix to eight hours of decent sleep. These are real. And they don't heal. They burn. They burn like raw unprocessed lye.

His damn eyes. His big damn eyes and his big damn mouth…the big moose, the big fat ass.

I've fought him more than five times. He's beaten me each time. I swear the guy's like a fucking wall. I'd go at him trying to punch and he'd block me. I'd go trying to kick and my foot would get bruised. I'd jump on his back and he'd buck me over the front of his shoulder like a fucking mechanical bull. Then he'd get me in some kind of a lock…a neck lock, a shoulder lock, anything. One time he just grabbed me in his huge arms like he was hugging me, like he had back in _Remaining Men Together…_but instead of hugging and crying he just started squeezing, squeezing me like a stuffed animal until I screamed because my spine was cracking and I gave up. Bob always beat me. I've been suffocated into some fat part of his body more times than I can remember.

Some habits die hard. Every time after he'd trounced me in fight club, he'd be slobbering all over me again. Not crying, not telling me disturbing new medical updates about his estrogen levels. But laughing. Laughing about how he'd kicked my ass. I remember the first night we fought, the first night I saw Bob at fight club. I remember being wrestled into submission on the floor and flailing frantically, swatting at his back to try and say I was giving up, because I couldn't talk because my face was being stuffed in a fat sweaty full-Nelson. And afterwards as we were walking out he kept me in a half-Nelson with one arm around my neck so I could barely stumble along. He said he hoped he hadn't hurt me. I replied that he had. He laughed again and shook me around more and I winced in pain. Bob. First I'd been his security blanket, then his fucking rag doll.

Bob. My friend. Who was dead now because of me.

He should have picked someone else. Anyone else. Anyone in the whole group except me.

I should have let him walk straight off the porch. I should have let Tyler tell him off and then left him to walk away. I should have cut my own tongue out with safety scissors before telling him that he had to stay on the porch three days before he'd be allowed to join Project Mayhem.

I am Jack's useless regret.

We're alone in the kitchen. Just me and Bob. His eyes are open. They stare up at the ceiling. His brains lay in a red puddle on the floor.

I gasp. The tears stream so fast and continuous, it reminds me of the night I met him. The first night I'd found freedom through crying. Maybe I can find it again.

Dark and silent and complete, where I belong. God. This is still my vacation. Pressed between those huge, sweating tits. I bend over Bob's body and push my face into them. I wrap my arms around his fat torso and hug like it's the last support group hug I'm ever going get. Which, actually, it is.

The horrible thing is, for a few seconds it works. I start to feel it, that breaking-apart feeling, that dying-so-that-I-can-be-reborn feeling. For a few seconds, just being there with my face buried in that familiar place, deep between those bitch tits, I feel myself going back. I sob. I bawl like a baby. The sounds are muffled into the fat.

After God knows how long I lift up my head. Every orifice in my face is leaking something. I smear my eyes with the heel of my hand. Bob's sweatshirt is black this time, but not so black that I can't still make out the wet marks left in the shape of my face. Just like old times. I sniff. I almost smile.

"Ok. You cry now."

My voices resonates in the empty kitchen. I realize what I'm doing and I want to go find Marla so we can get hit by that bus together.

"I'm sorry."

I am Jack's guilt. I am Jack's humiliation.

He's fucking dead. He's not going to cry. He a person and he's dead now because of me.

He was a friend of mine. And he's going to get buried in the garden behind the old decrepit house on Paper Street. The space monkeys are going to do what they have to. It won't matter what I say. His ex-wife and his two grown kids are never going to see him again. They're never going to be told what happened. In Project Mayhem we have no names. In Project Mayhem we have no family. No one is ever going to know what happened to him. He's dead. And it's all my fault.

My friend. We need different nametags now.

_My name was Robert Paulson. Goodbye._

_My name was Cornelius. Goodbye._


End file.
